Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday March 30, 2009 @07:55AM
from the step-in-the-right-direction dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Walt Disney Co and Hulu.com have restarted talks over offering shows from Disney's ABC television network on the online video distributor owned by NBC Universal and News Corp, paidContent.org reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources." The real question to me is when will they stop screwing around with Boxee users?

The problem with an online model is that it may or may not be possible to block the ads. When watching television, you see what you see, unless you flip the channel. Online, though, maybe or maybe not, with some streaming sites, blocking certain sites will potentially block the ads.

But, that's what they get when they have separate files from the show, as opposed to merging it into one long video file.

You seem to be referring to ABC's horrific website streaming model, which often brings up a separate website to show you the ad, and then makes you click after a determined amount of time to start the show again. Not only that, it also resizes your fullscreen and the volume level is never consistant. Sounds like ABC needs to join up with Hulu to avoid the warnings you are giving them. I don't know of a way to block Hulu's ads, and frankly, I don't care to, considering most of the ads are under 30 seconds, and I WANT internet tv to succeed.

Given that 90% of the people I know still use IE, or Firefox without Adblock, I don't think that ad blocking in streaming videos is much of a concern yet.

I don't, I'd rather the internet superseded TV; these webTV websites like Hulu leave the same old content syndicates in charge of when you watch, what you watch, and what you watch with it (no Boxee or mobile devices for you! No content if you're not from country X). Note Hulu is owned and directed by media conglomerates, it's not some plucky independent.

Worse, it gives them leverage over device manufacturers to later on demand things like no ad-skipping, no recording, etc etc. in return for licensing access to their webTV channel. The only advance of this system over TV is it isn't scheduled. If this is the future of internet TV, count me out, I'll go back to youtube and reading.

I'd rather a simple purchase/rent model myself (as in Amazon or iTunes), and the minimum of middlemen between the content producer and the purchaser. After the purchase I do whatever I want with the item I have purchased, and don't have to be connected constantly to watch it, or ask permission to transfer it to a device (in this respect iTunes fails, they should lose the DRM).

The concepts of ad-supported viewing, control over viewing, no recording/skipping, and even channels themselves really deserve to die along with broadcast TV.

I dislike commercials during my shows as much as the next person but as a business model goes, I think hulu will be able to take it to the next level. As an advertiser you want to put your product in front of the eyes most likely to purchase your stuff.

Hulu should be able to put together a netflix style algorithm of users who like the shows you do and then match it up to a set of demographics you fall into and truly target ads to you. Advertisers should LOVE this model.

I don't even mind the ads on Hulu because they are 15-30 seconds instead of 2 minutes or more on regular TV. That's not even long enough to make it worth my while to skip past the commercials. By the time I could reach to my remote to skip passed it the commercial will be almost finished.

Now if Adobe would make a flash player for Linux that was able to play full screen 480p streaming from Hulu well, I would be all set to cancel my cable subscription.

I don't even mind the ads on Hulu because they are 15-30 seconds instead of 2 minutes or more on regular TV. That's not even long enough to make it worth my while to skip past the commercials.

I don't think I've watched a full show online yet (I have a few times caught the very end of a show I missed due to not padding enough on Tivo or not being able to pad due to conflicting shows in the next time slot).

I certainly jump to MUTE the online commercials (which also show up on news video stories). So, while I

I don't even mind the ads on Hulu because they are 15-30 seconds instead of 2 minutes or more on regular TV.

This will change, mark my words.

When hulu started, there were no ads. Then they started putting "this program brought to you by so-and-so" in the beginning. Then they started inserting one or two very short ads per show. Now they're up to just as many commercial breaks as "regular" TV. (More, actually, on some older shows.) Next we'll start seeing 2 or more ads per break and it'll be the same as regul

I use Linux Mint on an old laptop that redirects out the s-video port. Hulu works fine, although it is annoying that it is optimized for 1024x768 and I have to scroll around on 800x600.
I also use XBMC, but for Hulu, I don't mind dropping out and using firefox.

Note Hulu is owned and directed by media conglomerates, it's not some plucky independent.

Plucky Independants in media, especially films and TV, exist on the backs of the giant conglomerates. Look at Steam, just as an example. If you tried steam without mainstream games, and only put up games like The Path, or i-Fluid or World of Goo, Steam would have died a long time ago. The more mainstream content shoulders the cost, the more networks are able and willing to support smaller, more daring shows. I agree that letting media consolidation run rampant is never good, but because Hulu exists, i'd expect a smaller, independant version to pop up as a sister site, because frankly, YouTube doesn't cut it for content distribution.

I'd rather a simple purchase/rent model myself

And you still can, but i'll be damned if i ever pay $1.99 for 22 minutes of The Daily Show. However, we're talking about Free content here. For that, I'd rather the ability to watch when I want, where I want, with fewer commercials and no cable TV bill, the more networks sign on for this, the better.

That is a bit of a chicken and egg thing, in that the content is mainstream because it is coming from mainsteam content providers.

Steam and Hulu and iTunes and similar services, can help to decentralize the system a bit so that the 'mainstream' is not tied to a given developer or studio or label. Of course that could just shift 'mainsteam' to a different entity, so ultimately it might not make much difference. It does shake things up a bit by getting away from the limited space that gives leverage to big co

That seems a lot like how British shows seem when they come to the US. That is, they're made much more cheaply, but at least *some* of them are good. (I know, even British shows probably have a way huger budget than you're talking about.)

(Don't get me wrong -- some of my favorite shows of all time are British -- e.g. "Coupling" and "Blake's 7".)

See the problem though is that all of those antiquated old media "TV Stations" make all the shows worth watching. Granted they make a lot of crap too, and very occasionally something like "Dr Horrible" comes along outside the structure, but in general the "stations" fund the studios and the studios make the content that is worth watching (along with lots of content that isn't). You-tube has proved that while there are a few creative individuals out there who can make amusing shorts and cute videoettes on

Well, first of all, I can't, because I don't live in the United States. However I have the same problem with similar services in the UK like the BBC iPlayer, which carries yet more content restricted to just one country, and has even more ridiculous restrictions on content (7 day rule).

Even if I did live in the states, I wouldn't be able to watch it when I want, because I don't sit chained to my desk waiting for TV to stream over an internet connection - this was a reference to it not being available on my

You seem to be referring to ABC's horrific website streaming model, which often brings up a separate website to show you the ad, and then makes you click after a determined amount of time to start the show again.

Yeah, cause clicking a "resume" button every 10 minutes is so much work.

What you see as horrific, I see as a step in the right direction. Most advertising, especially TV advertising, is audio/visual spam. They shoot it out to as many eyeballs and ears as they can, and hope that some if it goes to their target audience. So you end up watching a lot of commercials that are lame, repetitive, and trying to sell you stuff you would never, ever buy.

I think you need to broaden your vision a little and see how close hulu is to what you want. First of all, the only real limit on "watch when you want to watch" is the actual production of the content. The only show my wife and I watch as a real time broadcast is "Lost"; everything else is Netflix, Hulu or DVD. The rest of this content we've watched at our convenience. With a site like hulu when content is in the can it can be loaded to the site and people can watch it whenever. Concerning your desire f

I agree with what you say. The ads on Hulu really don't bother me. They are almost all under 30 seconds (with that latest Fedex one being around 8 seconds) and none are very annoying or intrusive. And, as you say, I want online TV to succeed.

The problem is, though, if this is truly successful, won't we start seeing longer, more obnoxious commercial spans in Hulu? At that point, it becomes just as bothersome as watching the show on broadcast TV. Also, how do you account for local advertising?

That damn click is the most annoying part of ABC's streaming service. I hate sitting down to watch a show only to have to get up EVERY commercial break to click the damn Continue button. Yeah, I could get a wireless keyboard and mouse but I'd rather just use a service like Hulu that sanely integrates commercials.

And the other problem is the ads themselves. They keep limiting their audience to the USA, as if they can't figure out that ads don't have to be limited to one market.

Just get the Coke, Nestlé, Kraft, Apple, Toyota of this world (i.e. the big international companies) for your commercials. It doesn't matter where you are on the planet, some products are available everywhere.

I know they only stream to the USA, that was my point. It's the internet, there is no point in doing that.

They don't have the rights to the content they are streaming outside of the US. They can't legally stream content to Australia without ABC (or whichever Australian broadcast network has the rights to your favorite Hulu show) suing them.

Since nearly all of these services only stream to the USA that's kind of expected.

If they were someday to become international targeting ads by using IP geolocation is pretty easy.. so it's a non-issue.

Most of those services stream to the USA -and- Canada.

We get CBS, ABC, NBC, Fox and TBS here in Canada but we're not allowed to watch those networks online. Some Canadian stations have great online viewers (such as CTV), however their content is limited as a good half of their content is American programming which they aren't allowed to air.

If you consider that 99% of Hulu's content is only available to viewers in the US because of licensing issues, and 99% of Hulu's ads are targeted at US markets, there's little incentive for Hulu to support any form of regional access at this time. When they have more content and ads that can be shared outside the states, certainly.

Whoever has the rights in your country won't let Hulu run the shows in it because it cuts into their advertising.

As Hulu says:

"Hulu is committed to making its content available worldwide. To do so, we must work through a number of legal and business issues, including obtaining international streaming rights. Know that we are working to make this happen and will continue to do so. Given the international background of the Hulu team, we have both a professional and personal interest in bringing Hulu to a glob

"They keep limiting their audience to the USA, as if they can't figure out that ads don't have to be limited to one market."

give it time, it's still a relatively new idea. It'll get to the point where you'll fill out a brief survey to subscribe to the service (DOB, sex, children, address, pets, etc) and they'll deliver custom content specifically designed for you.

Internet TV is a MUCH better advertising stream than TV will ever be. Imagine filling out a survey saying you have a dog and a new baby and

Well they better make it bloody convenient because like it or not, they are competing with torrents.

I'm willing to pay for convenience, seems most people are, so get rid of the unskippable shit, files that self destruct or can't be saved at all. Then let me choose a media player instead of the ugly branded junk. If not, then sorry but then you are competing on price alone.

Except for a lot of people (even with some currently-sold systems like Intel Atom netbooks), it's:Open browserGo to hulu.comAttempt to watch show, decide that watching TV as a slideshow sucksGo to TPB or mininovaDownload showWatch show with smooth video instead of tearing and/or slideshowing.

I have a number of PCs in my house. My Aspire One is too slow for Hulu. My HTPC is too slow for Hulu (despite only needing 40-50% CPU for the exact same content played in a different player - I know this from before H

I'm not sure what your issue with Hulu is hardware wise. I've run the service on a 4-5 year old laptop, running XP (and god knows what other malware) that I loaned to my parents. It's on its last legs, but doesn't appear to have any issues with Hulu.

Granted, I'm not sure if it would run much else in the meantime, but even on a 1mpbs connection, Hulu seems ok if you give it a moment or two to fill the buffer before you start.

Actually, you'd be misleading people to say 5 year old hardware isn't likely to have any issues.

Well I didn't mean it that way. What I meant was that *my* 5 yr old hardware isn't seeing any issues. It's a Dell Inspiron 8600 (http://www.tomsguide.com/us/a-new-notebook-hosts-the-athlon64,review-209-9.html) But the post implied that you needed something like a gaming PC to run Hulu, which hasn't been the case for any PC that I've used which is sufficiently de-malwared.

I've got a little box where I once put in a list of shows I want to watch. As soon those as shows get posted to Usenet, it leeches them, and whenever I switch it on I can see if something new is on there.

I get all the latest shows in HD where available, practically as soon as they've aired, been encoded and posted. Oh, and I live in the Netherlands, so even if I *wanted* to watch Hulu, I can't.

You either have cable, or alot more Hard disk space then I do. I download things that we will want to watch again, generally movies. I stream things I only want to watch once, House, Desperate Housewives, Kath and Kim. When my wife and I sit down to watch TV, we want a little bit of evening entertainment. Sure I can download ahead of time, but when you run out of downloaded content, for whatever reason, streaming is awsome and doesn't require me to save and delete to keep room on my hard drives.

If you take your Ritalin then you will be able to handle waiting for it to download. My entire family can wait patiently for a day or so.. Nobody sits there looking like a coke addict trying to clean out waiting...

"OMG OMG OMG.... Family guy was on 30 minutes ago and I still have not seen it... OMG.... I'm gonna crack.... Oh crap... I cant take it.... I NEED MY FAMILY GUY!!!! GIVE IT NOW!!!! DAMMIT!!!!!! ALL OF YOU HATE ME!!! I HATE YOU! GIVE ME MY FAMILY GUY!!!!"

That may be your world, but everyone I know is happier than hell to wait a day or so to get it from a download and all of them despise the streaming and the lack of control that comes with it. Try rewinding a stream or fast forewarding 10 minutes in.

Wow. I think you need to take YOUR Ritalin.
I was home sick last week and didn't want to wait around for hours, or even days, to catch up on Dollhouse. I simply went to hulu.com and I was watching within about 5 seconds of clicking play. Also, you can move to different points in the show without any issue as well.

The problem with the online model is that no one, no one is going to pay to watch films or TV shows online. Anyone who is doing this knows full well that there are free alternatives and they are simply not going to pay one cent. The buyer has awesome power here, and the seller virtually none.

The fundamental problem here, is that TV shows and films, like music tracks before them are worth almost nothing. The average TV series, is only a few gigabytes to download. The average show, streamed is probably no mor

There's a serious problem here then. TV shows cost money to make. Good ones cost a fairly large amount of money to make. Even crappy reality TV costs a pretty fair amount. In our brave new "content is worth nothing" world, who is going to make content.

ABC can't seem to keep their stuff together with their video client. the volume button is autistic, and the continue feature in which you are forced to hit a button to acknowledge that you watched their ad is recognized as a clickjack by modern browsers.They don't need HULU they need decent software.

Wait, you mean a commercial enterprise that pays a fee to host programming is purposely trying to make it difficult on free riders. Oh the shock, oh the outrage.

How can we possibly allow that to happen.

Seriously though, Hulu is working on adding device support to their service, I believe Roku is on the list, but they still have to pay their fees to use the media, and any service that zaps the ads isn't going to be considered for partnership.

I'm not really sure how people can be shocked or outraged about that. Hulu can only be free as long as the copyright owners allow their media to be used. And that requires some sort of payment, either a fee or watching the ads. And really, it only comes out to about a minute and a half per half hour, it's really not that much.

When I was a kid, I remember the first commercial break that contained 2 30-second commercials back-to-back instead of the normal 1 30-second commercial. People were outraged. How could they do it? Why were they trying to make us stop watching?

But I'm sure you would have told me "Don't worry, 2 commercials isn't that much." Fast forward a few decades and you now can't find the show for the advertising.

I don't think it's any mystery why Hulu is "screwing around with" Boxee users: Hulu's content providers don't want Hulu to be viewable on a TV and, thus (in their sad confused minds) compete with their television programming. Yes, it's stupid, but I don't see how this is Hulu's fault. They're getting jerked around by the content providers just like the rest of us.

It was good enough that it got me to spring for a license (usually I just wait for a free alternative to appear). This combined with better reception once the Digital TV transition happens means a lot more people can cut their cable bill drastically.

Besides just creating a new "On Demand" service, Hulu is a great way to get access to some Cable shows, without needing cable anymore.

(I hear HBO is pissed and trying to figure out how to let only subscribers have access

Right. And we both know that, if the content providers had anything to say about it, you wouldn't be able to use those either, or they'd be useless because your DVI-out would be wrapped in DRM (sound familiar? [wikipedia.org]).

I have a box hooked up to my TV and have recently gotten rid of my cable. Using Ubuntu/Boxee, except for the NBC shows I want to watch (because of the whole Hulu-Boxee thing). For those shows, I just created a prism app that goes directly to Hulu, at least for now, until they get everything sorted out.

The problem has always been the ABC shows I like, such as Lost. They won't work under Linux, so I have a VirtualBox image that I use for those shows. It's a crappy workaround. Adding ABC to Hulu would allow me to completely get rid of that VirtualBox image.

Regardless of the current situation between Hulu and Boxee, Hulu has allowed me to get rid of my $100-plus a month cable bill, so adding any major network is a good thing.

The problem has always been the ABC shows I like, such as Lost. They won't work under Linux . ..

They barely work under Windows. Every few weeks a Windows or Firefox update or a streaming change at ABC causes ABC's player to break in new ways. Which means I've gotta google the latest problem to fix my wife's computer so she can see her stories again. It's the 21st century version of fiddling with the rabbit ears, adjusting the fine-tuning knob and pounding on the TV set.

The problem has always been the ABC shows I like, such as Lost. They won't work under Linux . ..

They barely work under Windows. Every few weeks a Windows or Firefox update or a streaming change at ABC causes ABC's player to break in new ways. Which means I've gotta google the latest problem to fix my wife's computer so she can see her stories again. It's the 21st century version of fiddling with the rabbit ears, adjusting the fine-tuning knob and pounding on the TV set.

Too bad Torrentocracy [slashdot.org] shut down. If you didn't mind the grey legal area for torrents, it grabs beautifully encoded copies of television shows without DRM, hokey flash players, or any hoop jumping at all.

Why don't you just throw a tuner or two into your computer, install MythTV and be done with it? Why use Boxee at all? It seemed to me most of their content, other than the network television programming, was just crap.

Honestly, why should any of this matter to me. Hulu is yet another middleman between content and consumer. They're here solely to hustle a buck in exchange for burning my retina with adverts that I honestly don't want to see. They're going to be a flash in the pan. Sooner or later, someone is going to come up with a better model to get me content I WANT to see without forcing me to wade through shit I've made it clear I don't want to be bothered with.

Sooner or later, someone is going to come up with a better model to get me content I WANT to see without forcing me to wade through shit I've made it clear I don't want to be bothered with.

The problem with that is this model will either require1) Direct payment from youor2) You to be a free-rider on a system supported by othersor3) People willing to pay to get you to watch what you want to watch.

1) is tough because nobody wants to pay for TV. 2) is not sustainable. 3) is a pipe dream.

Let's all give up on TV for free. It's been a myth for ages anyway, with the costs either buried on your (mysteriously expensive) cable bill or in your purchase of mountains of stuff you don't need (and if you believe you're invulnerable to advertising you are the perfect mark).

Consumers have fought for years to be able to choose to pay for only the cable channels they want. Let's just go one better and pay for the specific shows we want.

Pay-per-view is a great model for this stuff, but there's too much "pay" per unit of "view".

Would I be willing to part with $1 to watch a bit of TV in the evening. Sure. $2? Maybe... $5? Starting to push it... But what's a bit of TV? If I watch a couple times a week, a bit of TV is probably 2-3 hours.

Would I be willing to pay $1 for a 20 minute show, and rack up $6-10 for watching for an evening? Certainly not. $0.99/show for one-time is way over priced. Get it down to $0.25 and we'l

If not offered there, I can just search for things like "60 minutes eklob" on mininova, and grab that feed, so I can get it right when the content is uploaded.

If I had the option to pay for a feed that had quicker turnaround, or for a search engine that would give me better feeds, I would. Option number 1 is good for the future, but until this whole content distribution clusterfuck calms down, I am fine with m

Why is Boxee the real question? I'd never even heard of it until they got blocked by Hulu, I don't know anyone who has one, and nobody I know is even thinking of getting one. Sure it was a lousy decision, but is it really so world-changingly lousy that Slashdot CANNOT EVER post about Hulu without bringing Boxee up?

(Er, that should have been "has *it*" and "getting *it*". Serves me right for posting before I've had my coffee. The point stands, though - I don't think Boxee is nearly as popular or important as the Slashdot editors seem to think.)

When Slashdot first began referring to Hulu blocking Boxee, I thought that this was some kind of set top box that would allow you to easily (using your remote) play online or locally stored content. Since this is exactly what I'm in the market for, I looked it up and was a bit disappointed to find out that it's just a software offering. (No knock against Boxee intended. It just wasn't what I was seeking.) I wonder when someone will make a decent, relatively inexpensive ($150 or less) set top box that ca

In my searches, I've seen a couple of different offerings that promise close to the functionality that I'm looking for. It makes me think that this type of set top box is right on the cusp of being available to the non-hobbyist.

Another "not quite down to $150" option is the Apple TV. It's even one of Boxee's supported platforms. Cheapest model is currently $229, but that's not too far off from your number. Still, they're small, silent, have an HDMI out for hi-def and can play content bought from iTunes too. And there's a pretty active community for hacking them to do more than Apple intends for them.

Hulu is funded through advertising. On the radio a few weeks ago, I think on NPR's marketplace, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/03/12/hulu/ [publicradio.org] they had an interview with Eric Feng, founder of Hulu. In it, he said that advertising is where the money is and that it is likely that the amount of commercials/ads shown per episode is likely to increase. It was either him or someone else on the program (I can't listen to the program right now) that said Hulu is likely to follow the same path as cable did - starting with very little commercials, and using that as a selling point, and then eventually transitioning to 7+ minutes of advertising per half hour as Hulu became indispensable.

I like Hulu, but I do not believe they operate under some "do our work for the benefit of the users" mantra. At some point they will do the analysis on ads vs. user dissatisfaction and will settle at a balance point.

I read an article in Wired (the bastion of reporting it is) from before Hulu was launched that discussed the troubles it was having for starting up and how it turned into a "crowned prince" almost overnight (hey, I'm catching up on back-issues). From the way the story is written, it sounds like the creators of Hulu bent over backwards to meet the common demands of video on the internet and get executives to, as well: things like user queues, allowing users to embed the video, etc.

Hulu is starting to get a pretty good mass now. Hulu is my preferred player (ease of use, intrusiveness of ads, etc.). NBCs is better in some ways (higher resolution) but worse in others (less able to handle connection bumps). CBS' player is decent, and ABC's player is probably the least user friendly of the bunch.

Hulu is the future; content providers who don't offer online streaming will be left behind. It's really a win-win. Consumers get an easy and free option to catch up with their shows if they miss them. The content provider gets to manage the time it's up and gets ad revenue, and likely can use web metrics software to get a better idea of viewership/demographics (NetRatings, Quantcast, Google Analytics, etc.) since very few households influence the Nielsen Ratings.

the real question to me is what the heck has happened to Hulu's service for the last month? i used to have great playback even on my Celeron 800Mhz Tablet, but now all i get is dropped frames -- even on my Athlon XP 3000+!

last year i watched all the episodes of "Arrested Development" and was surprised by both the quality of the series (it was new to me) and the quality of the streaming. it only took me the first 60sec of AD's episode 1 to turn me into a big Hulu fan! i even got into the habit of watching movies there afterwards.

the chopped playback doesnt seem to be a bandwidth issue because the audio and video never stop and they dont get out of synch either. when you think Flash playback cant become any heavier, Adobe and Hulu show you otherwise. it makes me wonder if the use of Silverlight could make this less worse?

Can see anything in Hulu because I am blocked by the site since I am not in the US.I have a virtual server located in the UD, may I use that slice to see Hulu? Not using VNC or remote visualization, but using it as a proxy. Any tip on how to do it?

I used to watch a lot of TV via the network web sites. It was great: didn't have to remember to set a recorder, didn't have to remember to go to the TV at a particular time, got shows that aren't available in my area without cable or a rooftop antenna (refuse to pay for one, landlord doesn't provide the other). Plus ABC shows were in a fancy widescreen mode that I can't get on my klunky old analog TV.

Then all the networks started switching to an evil software stack from Move Networks. Don't know the motivation (DRM? Outsourcing streaming infrastructure?) but it effectively cut me off from the sites that use it. The Move player requires more CPU bandwidth than my wimpy little tablet can handle. (So no more watching "Lost" in bed.) And even if I switch to my more powerful desktop machine, I get endless network. These might go away if I upgraded my DSL, but that's just not worth it.

Fortunately, a lot of the shows that I watch are also available on Hulu. And they still use a simple flash-based player. The rest I watch the old-fashioned way or do without.

I tried watching Lost on ABC's site and the experience was pretty bad. They had an annoying animated background with lightning going off while I was trying to watch the show. Even more annoying was the commercials they chose to air. I was watching season 2 and they showed commercials for the new season. I don't want too see ads for the new season which may contain spoilers for the season I'm currently watching!

Not only that, but with an online "on-demand" system, you can really see which shows are successful, you don't have to rely on brain-dead network executives and "surveys". Pay checks can also be directed at shows which are actually watched and not garbage that keeps sucking money until they are cancelled.

Also, said brain-dead network executives can't try to kill shows by shuffling them around anymore.

"Also, said brain-dead network executives can't try to kill shows by shuffling them around anymore."

Of course, now they can try to kill shows:
By increasing the number of commercial breaks per episodes
By disabling the "One long commercial at the beginning" option
By increasing the length of commercials per episode
By uploading the same older episodes multiple times, to flood the RSS feed with old material

And I am sure dozens of other methods as well. They can also bury the view page, make sure it ne

Who suffers: local access, religious channels and basically everything that barely got watched anyway. But they can move to a cheaper online broadcast for their current audiences anyway, or be part of the Ã la carte.

Actually, a lot of those channels do better online than they did on TV. The costs of production are mostly the same, but they then just need to come up with the cost of bandwidth, which while expensive is just related to the bandwidth needed. Whereas on TV they needed to bid against more popular programming whether or not people watched.

And they can also do crazy things like distribute programming via torrents and include time shifting right out of the box.

I know between this and netflix I get pretty pissy when it comes to online content coming from the states. I know the issue is that they are distributing the content outside of the US and it has to do with export laws. Comedy central has done a good job by dropping almost if not all of their content on the Comedy Network site, it's just too bad after so long that Hulu and netflix haven't created a Canadian provider for their material. I would definitely be into it.

Why should a third party (Firefox/Flash Player/Opera/etc...) be able to hijack Hulu's content for free?

Hulu is a website. Websites don't get to pick which browsers or platforms users view from. They can protest, and try feeble technological blocking methods, but the web is a client-agnostic platform and in the end Hulu and their providers are going to need to come to terms with that or die off.